Leornardo Da Vinci – [TITLE PENDING] A symposium in celebration of the quincentenary of Leonardo’s death. Sponsored by the 92nd Street Y and Stanford University as part of the Symposium on Music and the Brain. Michael Kubovy – University of Virginia Leonardo and the two culture problem I will present the two culture problem (which one might think Leonardo had solved) as instantiated in neuroaesthetics. Howard Morgan – Arca Group Inc. Israel Nelkin – Hebrew University Leonardo on Music The transience of music makes it, in Da Vinci's mind, lesser to painting in that it dies in the process of being created, while the beauty of painting is remembered for a long time. I will present an account of Leonardo's claim within current views of auditory perception, including the notion of reverse hierarchies, the role of predictive coding in audition, and the active/constructive nature of perception. Bio: Eli Nelken is the Milton and Brindell Gottlieb Chair in Brain Sciences and a director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Eli's main interest is in the way in which past and future interact in the auditory system - how the past history of sound shapes brain activity and therefore perception of future sounds. Eli's research combines state-of-the-art techniques in animal research with perceptual studies in humans.
Barbara Tversky, Stanford University & Columbia Teachers College Externalizing thought: Thinking Through Drawing Leonardo drew incessantly, that was how he thought. Far different from the serenity of his paintings, his drawings are frenetic, explosive. Yet drawings can't move, they too are still, despite the dynamic processes he was trying to understand, such as the flow of blood in arteries and the flow of water in rivers. He drew analogies from visually similar processes such as these, and used the actions of his hand as he drew as if they were mirroring the actions of nature. I will discuss Leonardo's process and put that in the larger context of using drawing as a way of thinking. Bio: Barbara Tversky is Professor of Psychology Emerita, Stanford University and Professor of Psychology, Columbia Teachers College. She was born a contrarian and early on began studying how people think about the various spaces they inhabit because the presumption at the time was that language was the foundation of thought. She extended this to the study of the spaces people create for
their own well-being, to augment thought, and to communicate, including gestures, depictions, diagrams, comics, sketches, and arrangements of the world, eventually showing, that spatial thinking is the foundation of thought. The foundation, not the entire edifice. Some of this appears in her May, 2019 book, Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought, Basic Books,
Timothy Weaver – University of Denver FlussoReflusso (live cinema performance, 2019) FlussoReflusso is a work of live cinema (audio < > video) performance that reanimates and revisits the ebb and flow of Leonardo’s drawings on scales from the metabolic/anatomic to the atmospheric. The project enriches the iconic Leonardo art-science residues through redrawn equivalents of our interior-exterior flows from the aorta to the deluge paired with the sonic expression of transcoded bioinformatics to sound. The intent of the work is a suspension of audience in the immersive moment of art-science practice across time. Bio: Timothy Weaver is a new media artist, life scientist and bioenvironmental engineer whose concerted objective is to contribute to the restoration of ecological memory through a process of speculative inquiry along the art | science interface. His recent interactive installation, live cinema, video and sonic projects have been featured at venues across North to South America and Europe. Weaver is Professor of Emergent Digital Practices at the University of Denver with research, creative and teaching specializations in biomedia, sustainable design and art-science synergies. More details on his project and research activities are available at: <http://www.timothyweaver.org>
Robert Zwijnenberg – Universiteit Leiden Leonardo and labyrinthine thinking. How did Leonardo think? And why and how is this of importance to us? I will explain Leonardo's labyrinthine way of thinking and argue why this way of thinking can help us to come to terms with the fact that we have created a world we cannot control. Bio: Robert Zwijnenberg is full professor of Art and Science Exchange at Universiteit Leiden. His research and teaching focus are on the role of contemporary art in the academic and public debates on the implications of biotechnological innovations. Zwijnenberg specifically engages with a growing number of artists, known as bio-artists, who use the opportunities offered by biotechnology to work with new materials: living materials that traditionally do not belong to the artistic realm. Bio-artists artistically explore the cultural, social, ethical, political and esthetic implications of biotechnological innovations. Zwijnenberg published a book on Leonardo: The Writings and Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci: Order and Chaos in Early Modern Thought. CUP, 1999.